The beginning of another season!Everyone ready?I’ve heard from several zones/provinces with some very good numbers from clinics.Are we doing better at adding female referees to our numbers?

What can we do better?How can we support our membership better?I’d love to hear your ideas.

On another front – I have some good news and some not so good news.

The good news is as a result of many, many requests from our membership, we managed to pass a motion at our last ROC meeting allowing officials to wear of a long sleeved shirt under our uniform to accommodate those events that give us goosebumps.The shirt must be navy, without any logo or design and fit snugly.That’s the good news.

The not so good news is I spent a day shopping for said shirt and had very little luck.Not no luck, but the outcome was not great.You’d think a navy long sleeve base layer – easy. I tried all the basic companies that manufacture base layers (Helly Hansen, Columbia, MEC, Nike, Under Armour and more) with no luck.All have a really nice black shirt, some have grey, but no one that I could find had a navy shirt in either the men’s or women’s style.The only option that I found was a navy, cotton, long sleeved T-shirt at WorkWearhouse.Not an impossible option – it does fill all the requirements of our uniform and it is reasonably priced at about $20.I was hoping for more of a synthetic shirt that would better match our uniform and wear better than what I found.

I did not find any option for the guys.Black is not an option.It was a tough sell to many of the ROC’s and executive around the table and we need to be sure that we only go with a navy option.

I’d ask that you all keep an eye out for a suitable alternative and share with us should you find one.It would be great if we could all acess the same style.For now, should I need it, I’ll be wearing the Work Wearhouse shirt that I found.